Xbox 360 owners won't have to wait too long for the latest Tales game. At Microsoft's Xbox 360 RPG press conference, held at an event hall in Shibuya today, Namco Bandai announced an August 7 release date for Tales of Vesperia. The game will retail for 7,800 yen (tax-inclusive).

In a first for the series, Namco Bandai is planning for a near simultaneous worldwide release for Vesperia. The North American version will arrive in August. The rest of Asia will see the title some time in the summer. Europe is being left out on the fun until 2009.

Microsoft isn't letting the 360 get its first Tales series game without making some noise. Joining the standard 7,800 yen version of the game will be the Xbox 360 Tales of Vesperia Premium Pack, a hardware bundle that combines a 20 gigabyte standard model Xbox 360 with a special face plate and a script book. All this for 37,800 yen.

The contents of the bundle pack. Make sure you play the game before reading the script!

A demo of the title will be released to Xbox Live Marketplace some time this month. At the press conference, producers Yoshito Higuchi and Tsutomu Gouda used this demo version for a gameplay demonstration, showing off a lengthy event scene followed by a battle. The press was given a chance to sample this area for themselves following the close of the press conference.

The two producers also touched upon some of the related products Namco Bandai is working on for the title. As previously announced, the Japanese version of the game's theme song, performed by Bonnie Pink, will be released around the same time as the game, August 6 (of course, the game's release date wasn't known when the single was announced late last week). Namco Bandai will also release an original soundtrack for the title on August 20.

A demo will be released to Xbox Live Marketplace later this month.

In broader Tales news, Namco Bandai is working with Kadokawa Shoten for the release of the Tales of Magazine, a magazine devoted exclusively to the Tales series. The first volume will hit on August 7, with Vol.2 arriving on October 10. Subsequent issues will follow every month on the 10th. Pricing for this magazine is set at 780 yen per issue.